Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice Review

The audio is the reason this exists. Recorded binaurally and mixed so that the voices in Senua's head move behind and beside you, the effect through headphones is genuinely destabilising, and it was built with input from people with lived experience of psychosis rather than from horror movie shorthand. Melina Juergens gives a performance of enormous physical commitment, and the Icelandic locations captured through photogrammetry on a small budget look better than most studio productions of the period.

As an act of empathy and as a technical showcase it is important. As a game it is thin. Combat is a three button loop against four or five enemy types with a focus mechanic that trivialises most encounters, and the game's own permadeath threat turned out to be a bluff, which undercuts its central tension once players compared notes. The rune puzzles, where you rotate the camera until scenery lines up into a shape, are repeated far too often across eight hours. Remarkable to experience, unremarkable to play.